Toxic hunger — Another reason to stay away from junk food
Day 75 / 365
When an alcoholic or a drug addict decides to go clean, his body goes into a state known as withdrawal. They would feel anxious, have panic attacks and have physical symptoms like sweating and nausea as well.
Something similar happens to us with food as well. How many of you have had feelings of depression when you didn’t get the food you craved to eat. Only when you finally got that packet of chips, or that burger, or that ice-cream, did you feel better. We have been normalized to treat these feelings as hunger. But this craving for junk food is not ‘True Hunger’, it’s something known as Toxic Hunger.
Addiction to junk food with lots of fat and sugar in them is a real thing. Which is why Toxic hunger is so similar to withdrawal symptoms. If a recovering alcoholic is going through withdrawal, we wouldn’t advise him to drink some whiskey so that he feels better. So why do we make that mistake when it comes to junk food?
What actually causes toxic hunger
After digesting junk food rich in fats and sugar, our body needs to detoxify. It’s this detoxification that causes us to feel discomfort, which we wrongly identify as hunger.
A healthier diet to experience true hunger
So surely the solution should be to eat healthier. And it has indeed been verified with scientific studies. After switching to a healthier diet, people report that their experience of hunger drastically changes. Ever had a headache because you didn’t get to eat dessert? That’s toxic hunger. Studies have shown that with a healthier diet, feelings of hunger occur in the mouth and throat and not in your head or stomach. That’s true hunger.
So just restricting calorie intake is not the answer, you need to make sure that the calories you do take in are healthy. On such a diet you will feel ‘True Hunger’ only when your body actually needs more calories.
Junk food is addictive, so we must avoid it as much as possible. But what should we substitute it with? Well, I haven’t quite figured that part out yet, but I am working on it and will post it in a future blog soon.
This story is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here
Yesterday’s blog —Is tomato a fruit?